Over the last 10 years, more data has become available, our understanding of data has grown, and the sophistication of our tools has improved, but we have remained focused on that mission, providing accessible data to a wide variety of partners, the public, and anyone who seeks our assistance. In pursuit of that goal, we’ve worked on projects ranging from small neighborhood-based initiatives all the way to state and federal data projects.

Today, D3 works primarily in four areas: education, neighborhoods, business/workforce, and accessibility/outreach. Our projects span the entire state of Michigan, and sometimes beyond. As a celebration of our 10 years of providing data to Detroit, Southeast Michigan, and beyond, we wanted to share some highlights of our work over the years.

Since 2009, we have been members of the National Neighborhoods Indicators Partnership, a national network of “data nerds” like ourselves who strive to fulfill a similar purpose. Not only are we able to share best practices on a regular basis, but the network convenes regularly to learn more and forge working partnerships between member organizations (Check out some of our reflections from 2010, 2014, 2015, 2017). In 2017, we worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and NNIP to work with two organizations to help them build their capacity to serve their communities with data and accelerate the growth of the NNIP network.

D3 has remained committed to our mission of providing accessible data for informed decision making. Accessibility and outreach are overarching themes in all of our work. They are the values that drive us to create online data resources like State of the Detroit Child or the Housing Data Portal. Accessibility is more than that though, and that’s why over our history we’ve engaged in conversations about data usage around the world. Whether through the NNIP network, local data workshops, German PhD students, or Israeli high school students, We are committed to speaking about data accessibility and analysis and advocating for data driven decision making. Our AskD3 program provides answers to thousands of community members’ data questions with 2 free hours of work. In partnership with Microsoft, we also steward the Detroit Civic User Testing Group, a network devoted to ensuring Detroiters can provide feedback on the apps and websites created to serve them.

So what’s next?

As we pursue these lofty goals of smart data use and consumption, we’re looking forward to continuing to facilitate progress towards the Metro Detroit Data Alliance. Recently we kicked off another test case related to opportunity youth, which crosses all four of our buckets of work: business/workforce, neighborhoods, education, and accessibility. We’re also working to expand our workshop offerings and exploring other outreach initiatives, making it easier for organizations across Southeast Michigan to use data every day.

We are grateful for the opportunity to serve our community for the last decade and are so excited to see where the next 10 years lead us.